


Captain Alexandria: The First Avenger

by Kila9Nishika, Philosophizes



Series: Alexandria 'Verse [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, M/M, Seriously Alternate Universe, Vikings!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-20
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-05 12:26:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1818460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kila9Nishika/pseuds/Kila9Nishika, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosophizes/pseuds/Philosophizes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Considered unfit by his people, Stevin Rothgers volunteers for a research project that turns him into Captain Alexandria, a superhero dedicated to defending the hopes and dreams of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS AN AU! AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE!
> 
> I hope that was clear enough.
> 
> A list of characters and their slightly altered names will be provided at the end. Read it if you wish for spoilers.

_From recordings done by Shoshanna Sihara (Earth-96, “Sue Storm”). Translated by SHIELD._

-

                Hjördíshavn isn’t the capital of the Viking province of Vinland. The actual capital is Flotnarborg, north on the sea where the coast of Vinland faces towards Greenland, far across the waters. Flotnarborg, it is said, is where Eirik IV the Seafarer, the fifth King of the Vikings, set first foot on the new continent in the late 1100s. Flotnarborg is a proper city, like Roma or Byzantium - shops and houses and streets and government buildings, a port, market fairs- small, yes, but actually a city.

                Hjördíshavn is the furthest south Hjördís II the Dragon, sixteenth King- the Vikings must have some sort of aversion to the word ‘Queen’, don’t ask me why, they’re just as warlike as the Finns or the Hekassir and both of _them_ are perfectly comfortable with using feminine titles- of the Vikings ever got in Vinland. She died fighting the Iroquois Confederacy; and where her blood seeped into the ground, they started building. 

                The central square in Hjördíshavn is the only place in the city you can see uninterrupted sky. Alexandria has forests of towers; Hjördíshavn has forests of factory stacks. Wide swathes of shadow cut across the factory grounds from the buildings, and the thick steam clouds from the nuclear reactors heat everything up. The noise from the trains is everywhere, and junk heaps smelling of machine oil and heat pile up in alleyways. It’s a dark, hot, noisy maze until you get waterside.

Here, the boats pull up the channel, dock at port, unload, and head for the boat docks on Manhattan Island to wait for passengers and cargo for the trip out. Any sailors with shore leave take the train from the dock hostels, over the channel, through the city, and out to the residential fringes- suburbs, really, towns; but the Vikings, like the Narbonni, think a city isn’t a city unless your work and home and strictly separated. Only the chronically destitute and the homeless live in the city proper.

                Hjördíshavn proper is where Stevin Rothgers and Buchanan Bjorns lived.

-

_May, 1823_

                Vinland had caught on to the concept of workhouses quickly. Orphans went to workhouses, the homeless went to workhouses, the debtors went to workhouses. The debtors were the worst off in this situation, nothing but thralls until the cut of their wages that didn’t go to the workhouse exceeded the amount of debt they’d been in. With the homeless, you could never really tell- they all came to the workhouses voluntarily, but Vinland had been slow on other things, like DNA cataloguing, and everyone always suspected the homeless of being fled debtors lying about their names.

                Stevin- Steve, to his friends, but he only had the one- was thankful every day of his life that of all the things the gods had cursed him with, debt and homelessness weren’t on the list.

                “Everybody knows you’re an Alban, the way you spell,” Steve told his friend. “Why not stick a ‘k’ in it, B-U-K-A-N-A-N, make your life easier?”

                “My family came from the shores of Ibernís!” Bucky replied, sliding easily into his mother’s strong Alban Norse. This was an old argument between them, and done more out of habit than seriousness. “Do you _want_ me to deny my ancestors, Steve? Do you _want_ me to pretend like we didn’t used to work on the crews of the court ship of our Kings?”

                “Yeah, well why’d you come to Vinland, then?” Steve shot back. “I bet King Eydís _herself_ kicked your mother off Alba-”

                “Don’t you say a word against my mother!” Bucky mock-scolded, punching him on the side. Steve, prepared for the habit, had stopped walking and braced himself. “A scrawny little Vinlander, that’s all you’ll ever be!”

                “Better than being a Mississippian,” Steve retorted, and they continued on to dinner.

                Meals in the workhouse was just a break between jobs- you woke up or got back from the late night shift of one factory, had breakfast, went to the morning shift in a different factory, left, had your lunch, headed off for the afternoon shift somewhere else, left, had your dinner, and then slept or went to the early night shift in yet a _different_ factory.

                Steve was confined, by law, to half-days of work. He could only do two out of four shifts, courtesy of regular examinations by the workhouse doctor. Bucky could do three shifts; and had been pushing for four shifts every third day now that he was old enough.

                Dinner would be the last Steve saw of Bucky until he got back to the room they shared after the early night shift.

                As usual, the mess television was showing the European news. Steve grabbed the seats underneath it for himself and Bucky.

                _‘-siege of Kesurga still underway in the heartland of the Hekassir Empire. The older capital has been staunchly defended by the Hekassir army and its own citizens against the forces of the Belgundan alliance. A Franx excursion earlier today was repelled by a mixed telekinetic/projectile mutation Hekassir platoon-’_

“Filthy Franx,” Bucky spat. “Hope they got what was coming to them.”

                _‘-Narbonni deserters freed from the prisoners taken joined the defense forces. Judean and Alexandrian representatives once again denied rumors that Narbonni defectors are being used as spies in Hispania and Iberia.’_

Steve gave Bucky a look meant to shut him up so he could hear. The sudden Franx takeover of Narbonne earlier that year had been a brutal shock, yes- after Napoleon’s defeat almost a century ago in 1731, everyone had thought the Franx were done trying to make a name for themselves that wasn’t ‘The Vinland of Europe’.

                _‘Mediterranean Rail reported another instance of sabotage to the first-level track between the Byzantium and Kesurga stations, where the train passes through Sarmatian territory. Mediterranean Rail CEO Orestes Badžo has increased the vitrol of his denunciations of what he describes as ‘Byzantine terrorists’. The government of Byzantium and the Byzantine armed forces issued a joint statement denying knowledge of or responsibility for  the sabotage, and called Badžo’s denunciations ‘premature’, ‘reactionary’, and ‘a symptom of political leanings’ . Any Byzantine actions to fulfill their alliance with Franx seems stalled by their proximity to Judea-’_

The news went on, and on; and like every day, with each new bit of information on the developments of the Great War, Steve wanted nothing more but to go and help.

-

The opportunity to help came sooner than Steve could have hoped.  As he and Bucky were heading into the mess for lunch, Bucky elbowed him.  “Lookit.”

Steve rubbed his eyes.  “Bucky, you expect me to _see_ after this morning?”  A rather large piece of metal had smacked Steve in the face less than an hour earlier.

Bucky sighed.  “There’re ten guys loitering in the front of the mess.  Two are wearing that dress-stuff that Easterners wear, and the other eight are wearing pants so sharp they might cut someone.  All of ‘em are seriously in good money, because they look _good_.”

Steve filled his trencher and followed Bucky to a table.  “Why do you think they’re here?  Think someone’s got a debt remitted?”

Bucky snorted.  “Maybe they discovered a long lost prince hidden down here in the muck.”

“ATTENTION!”  One of the workhouse managers scowled across the room.  “All you idiots shuddup ‘cuz there’re some real nice Doctors from Alexandria who might just be your ride to the Promised Land.”

“ _If_ I may butt in?”  Steve squinted.  The speaker was a snappy man with a pen-line mustache and emerald green robes.  He had the sleeves of his robes rolled up past his elbows, and the smile of a get-rich-quick talker.  A quick bow got everyone’s attention.  Who bowed to _them_.

“He- _llo_ , ladies and gentlemen, I am Howard _Antonius_ Stark, _Doctor_ of Science, and this is Avraham Bét Yisroel, Doctor of Science.”  The man indicated was the other man in robes.  “We are here today to offer a unique chance to any one of you who is brave enough to take it.”

Steve barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes (that would _hurt_ ).  Stark had said the magic word.  Challenge a man’s bravery around here, and you’d get Trouble.

“Sponsored by the BINYAN in Alexandria, we are here to offer the chance for a man to participate in a scientific expedition – metaphorically speaking.  This will be an expedition into the world of the future, a chance to be a name remembered by the world, forever.”  Stark grinned.  “All you need to do is take a serious of tests, and we will evaluate the volunteers for eligible participants.  All eligible participants will be on the ship with us, at dawn on Monday morning.”  His grin widened.  “Thank you.”

The eight unintroduced people surrounded Stark and Bét Yisroel, and all ten people left the room.

“So,” said Bucky as the noise levels in the room increased, “What’d you think of _that_?”

Steve pushed his potatoes from one side of his trencher to the other.  “I think I might apply.”

Bucky, halfway to standing, dropped his trencher on the floor.  “Steve, what in Hel’s _name_?”

Steve shrugged.  “Look, it isn’t like I’ll be able to help BINYAN or the world in any other way.  If I went to war, I’d be somebody’s thrall or dead in three seconds.  As it is, we’re still not involved in the war, but you could ship off with one of those European work crews and join a European Regiment.  Either way, I can’t.  Besides, it isn’t like they’ll choose me anyway.”

Bucky spent the rest of the lunch hour bouncing from attempting to dissuade Steve, to attempting to convince him that they _would_ choose him if he applied.

 As soon as Bucky went back to work, Steve took the tests.

Although none of the testers said a word about success or failure, Steve knew that he had failed each one.  He was shaking from head to toe, his muscles were screaming, and he was soaked with sweat.  His chest hurt from attempting to seize up, and his throat was raw from coughing.  And all he had done was attempt their _tests_.

He didn’t bother to tell Bucky about it.  No need to rake up the humiliation more than once.

The lights for nighttime were flickering on by the time Bucky stumbled into the room, bleary-eyed and scowling. 

“You took the test, didn’t you?”

Steve blinked.  “Why?”

Bucky threw himself on his bed.  “Because Stark came by the factory looking for you.  I told him that you weren’t there.  Why did you do it?”

“What do you expect me to do?” Steve cried.  “We’re going to join the war, and you’ll ship out.  I’ll be stuck here with the children and the women who don’t want to fight.  You’ll come back, get married, and have enough war-pay to buy a home somewhere and have kids.  I’ll be here, working, because what woman would ever want to _look_ at me, and I’ll be the only man in _Vinland_ who didn’t go to fight!  Or _worse_ , you _won’t_ come back, and I’ll be the only man who didn’t fight _and_ I’ll die in this Jotunn-spit workhouse!”  He took a breath to say more, but his chest caught, and he began to cough.

“Steve?  Steve, I’m – oh, damn, Steve, _breathe_.”  Bucky clapped him hard on the back.  “ _Breathe_.”

The clap knocked something loose, and Steve took a ragged breath.  He blinked up through teary eyes.  “Sorry, Buck,” he rasped.

Bucky shook his head.  “No, it’s my fault, I shouldn’t’ve pissed you off.  Whatever anyone else says, you’ve got the soul of a Viking in there, and it’s my fault for forgetting.  I –”

A knock on the door interrupted whatever Bucky had been about to say.  Steve rolled his eyes (painfully) at the hesitant glance that Bucky threw him before opening the door.

“Oh.  _You_ ,” Bucky said darkly.  “Come in.  I _guess_.”

Steve stared as Doctor Howard Stark and Doctor Avraham Bét Yisroel stepped into the room.  Bucky was still wearing his dark glare.  “What do you want?”

For a moment, it looked as if Stark was about to joyously burst out into song, but it was Doctor Avraham Bét Yisroel who spoke up.

“Your name is Stevin Rothgers?”

Steve blinked.  “That’s me,” he said.  “Why?”

Doctor Avraham Bét Yisroel smiled faintly.  “You are the one who passed the tests.  If you are willing, we shall take you to our ship and leave at dawn.”

Steve stared.  “You – that – I _passed_?”

“You are the only one who did so,” Doctor Avraham Bét Yisroel said gently.

“Then I –”  Steve hesitated, looking at Bucky.  Bucky rolled his eyes.

“Got room for one more?”

Stark opened his mouth, but it was again Doctor Avraham Bét Yisroel who spoke up.  “Certainly.  We were hoping for more people to pass the tests.  You would come along?”

Bucky straightened.  “You got a problem with that?”

Doctor Avraham Bét Yisroel shook his head.  “Not at all.  Not at all.”


	2. Chapter Two

The sun was just starting to set on the Thorsday after they had boarded the ship, but Steve was below deck.  After three consecutive sunsets and four sunrises, Steve was perfectly content to leave the staring at the waves to those who _didn’t_ get ill.  Bucky, being the stubborn friend that he was, had decided that he would remain below deck with Steve, and play cards. 

So far, Steve had won four buttons and a handkerchief from Bucky.

As the cabin grew steadily darker, the door burst open.  Bouncing on his heels, Howard Stark beamed at them.  “You’re going to want to see this!” he crowed.

Bucky stood up, but Steve just shook his head, leaning back in his chair.  “I’ll stay down here, thanks,” Steve said.  “I don’t need to get ill to see another sunset.”

Howard shook his head.  “No, come on, Steve, I’m not talking about the _sunset_!”  In between words, he grabbed Steve by the arms and began dragging him up the stairs.  “You’ll _love_ this.”

Steve stumbled once out in the cutting night air.  The sky was a dusky purple-grey color, and the horizon was pink with the remains of the setting sun.  Steve was about to pull away and head back down to his cabin, when something caught his eye. 

It was like a glass reflecting light, directly above the setting sun.  Steve stared.  With every breath, the light grew more distinct – no mere light, but a tower, stretching into the sky like an upturned icicle.  It was as if the Northern Lights were captured in a single frail glass tower, every color imaginable tangled in its crystalline frame.

And every breath, every second brought them closer.

“Thor’s _hammer_ ,” Bucky breathed.  “What _is_ that?”

“ _That_ ,” Howard drawled, “is the Tower of Alexandria.  It’s visible from eight hundred miles out at night, and six hundred during the day, but it’s pretty damn impressive at sunset.”

“ _I’ll_ say,” Bucky mumbled.  “We’re going _there_?”

“Not quite.”  Doctor Avraham Bét Yisroel stepped up beside them, running his hand through his hair.  “BINYAN is stationed on Pharos Ktana, outside of the city itself.  Neither myself, nor Howard, has an apartment in the Great Tower, but the observation decks on Levels Two, Three, and Four are free to all entry with a scan search.”

“A weapons scan?” Bucky asked, his eyes still fixed on the growing Tower.

“Weapons scan, contaminants scan, and DNA scan so that they know exactly who is on the observation decks at all times.”  Howard looked disgruntled by this for some reason.

Avraham turned towards the stairwell.  “It’s no bother, and it keeps the people of Alexandria safe, Doctor Stark.”  He threw a tired smile at Steve and Bucky.  “I am off to bed; we have a great deal of paperwork at the gate in thirteen hours, and I am quite eager to see my children on Shabbat.”

As Avraham left the deck, Bucky turned to Steve.  “Shabbat?” he mouthed.

Steve rolled his eyes.  “Laugerday, Bucky.  The Judean weekly holiday.”

Howard huffed, leaning on the deck rails.  “More like a whole day when most of Alexandria skives off.  It’s why the procedure is waiting until Sol’s day – that is, Sunday.”

Steve smiled.  “That…actually sounds quite nice,” he said slowly.  “Do we get the day off, too?”

Howard waved a hand.  “ _Everyone_ gets the day off.  People only come in to work if they _want_ to, which means that 75 percent of Alexandria is closed _once a week_.”

Steve’s stomach abruptly decided that it had finished being kind for the evening, and rolled ominously.

“On that note,” Steve said hastily, “I’m going back to our cabin, Bucky.  Maybe I can get some sleep before we dock tomorrow.”

  Bucky rolled his neck lazily, and followed.  “Good luck on that one.”

The next morning, docked underground at an island called “Pharos Ktana,” Steve breathed a sigh of relief as he stepped onto solid ground.  He had managed to get very little sleep during the night, and was hoping that he might steal an hour or two of sleep before “The Procedure.” 

Leaving the border checkpoint, Doctor Avraham Bét Yisroel stopped him.  “Steve,” he said in his clipped Judean accent, “I was hoping that you and your friend Bucky would stay over at my home for Shabbat.  My wife and I would be honored to open our home.”

Steve hesitated.  “I – we – I wouldn’t want to trouble you, sir, and –”

Avraham laughed.  “Steve, I can assure you that it would be no trouble.  Elisheva would like to meet you both, and a Judean mother always means ‘feed’ when she says ‘meet.’”

Steve shrugged.  “Well, if it won’t be any trouble…”

He froze.  Stepping from the underground dock, Steve had just been confronted with something out of the wildest dream he had ever had.

Boats of all sizes moved at all paces through an intricate network of canals, and people of all types walked the docks and pavings along the canals.  Buildings made from blindingly white stone and shimmering metals and glass reached towards the sky like nothing that Steve had ever seen.  Just at the edge of his vision, something like a ceiling covered a large area of the city, and perched atop it were even more sky-scraping towers.  Trains tore through their sky-high tunnels, and a couple some sort of hovering machines hummed in the direction of Pharos.  Central to it all was The Tower, that enormous shimmering construct that seemed to have no end.  It simply pierced the clouds, and continued on.

“It’s like Asgard in the songs,” breathed Steve, “or Valhalla.”  Beside him, Bucky nodded, frozen in place as his mouth gaped.

Avraham laughed softly, taking them by the shoulders.  “Not Valhalla, or Asgard,” he said amusedly.  “Steve, Bucky, welcome to Alexandria.”  He winked.  “Now come, Elisheva and seven of my children are waiting for us.”

Bucky found his voice.  “Seven?”

Avraham shrugged, leading the way to a small personal boat.  “Well, yes.  Six of the other twelve are in Judea, and the others are living on their own.”

Steve’s mind struggled to understand this, even as he climbed into Avraham’s boat and pulled on the safety harness.  _Nineteen children?_

He had almost gotten over it when they stepped into a tiny room near The Tower.  Avraham placed his palm on a small panel by the doors.  “Avraham Bét Yisroel, Level Two, seventh floor, apartment twelve.  Two guests, Stevin Rothgers and Buchanan Bjorns.”

The doors to the room slammed shut, and an automated voice responded.  “Avraham Bét Yisroel, 2-7-12, guests Stevin Rothgers and Buchanan Bjorns.  Please remain stationary while the lift brings you to your destination.”

The next moment, the air popped, and Steve gasped slightly.  It felt as if something was pressing down heavily on his shoulders.  Beside him, Bucky grabbed his wrist and gave him a bracing smile.  “Steady, Steve,” he murmured.

The feeling of pressure slowly eased off, and the air had finally returned to normal when a small ringing noise sounded through the room.  “Avraham Bét Yisroel and guests, you have now reached your destination.  The time now is thirteen hours and two minutes from midnight, and seven hours and two minutes from sunrise.  Shabbat automation will begin at eighteen hours from midnight, or twelve hours from sunrise.  Please do not leave anything in the lift.  Have a nice day, and a Shabbat Shalom.”

As they stepped from the lift, Steve turned to Avraham.  “Shabbat automation?”

Avraham nodded.  “The Judean Shabbat does not allow us to use electronics or mechanics.  During such time, the Shabbat automation makes the lifts and other machines work in regular intervals, so that those of us who live on Level Two may travel the city during the Shabbat.”

“Abba!”  Three children burst from one of the doors in the corridor, and skidded to a stop just short of bowling Avraham over.  The tallest, a girl with waist-length auburn hair, grabbed Avraham’s sleeve.  “Abba, Ima rotzah leidah im –”

“Dimtana, Rokhel, dimtana.  Yeshlanu urkhim, v’ein l’em halashna.  Tidkhar Skandi?”  Avraham turned apologetically to Steve and Bucky.  “I am sorry, but only Rokhel knows any Skandi, of my children still at home.”

The girl, Rokhel, put her hand on her heart.  “I have great joy to have met you,” she said stiffly.  “Abba, I am to go to Ima with Yisroel and Alexander?”

Avraham nodded.  “Go tell Ima that we have two guests.”

Rokhel nodded.  “E’eseh, Abba.  Urkhim, v’omer al halashna?”

Avraham nodded, smiling faintly as Rokhel dragged her brothers back to the apartment at high speed.  “Knowing my family,” he said affectionately, “Elisheva will be waiting with shavarma im lavash.”

“What’s that?” Bucky asked, throwing a curious glance over Steve’s head.

Avraham smiled.  “Food.  Very, very, good food.”

-

When Sunday- Yom Rishon, Sol’s Day, _whatever_ they were using- came around, Steve was more than a little nervous. Doctor Bét Yisroel had not lied- shavarma im lavash _was_ “very, very good food”. It had settled in his stomach like nothing he could remember, and Mrs. Bét Yisroel had kept giving them more and more. He and Bucky had gone to bed _very_ full.

The lab they were doing “The Procedure” in reminded Steve of one of the factory control rooms from Hjördíshavn. The bank of computers and equipment curved in a semicircle around the base of the central machine, which, Steve noted, was worryingly abundant in restraints. The Bét Yisroels- Avraham, Elisheva, and the children- had all come down with him and Bucky. Elisheva herded Bucky in with her children and took them up to the glass observation deck, which was already packed with people.

“BINYAN command,” Doctor Bét Yisroel told him when he noticed Steve eyeing the gallery nervously. “That’s our Director up front, with the Roman and Aegupt-Judean generals.”

Doctor Stark was fiddling with something on a machine.

“Three minutes!” he called, and snapped his safety goggles in place.

“Time to get you set up, Stevin,” a woman said.

“This is Doctor Alspeth Ros,” Doctor Bét Yisroel told Steve as they started arranging him in the central machine. “She’s a biological scientist, and has been a great help on the development of the serum we’re going to be treating you with.”

“The name BINYAN has given our work is the ‘Super Soldier Project’,” Doctor Ros told him as she started strapping him down. “Now, what’s going to happen is we’re going to inject you with the serum, expose you to a little radiation-”

 _“Radiation?”_ Steve asked. Every factory in Hjördíshavn ran on a nuclear reactor, and he’d been having radiation drills his entire life. He _knew_ about radiation.

“Just a little bit,” Doctor Ros assured him as she strapped him down. “It’s a slight trigger to the human mutant genome- we’re waking it up just enough to react with the serum and apply the changes to all your systems immediately, just like if you’d had a _full_ trigger to an active mutant genome-”

“I’m not a mutant-” Steve tried to tell them, still worrying about the _radiation._

“Every human has the genome that holds the code for what mutant powers you _would_ have if the right trigger was given,” Doctor Bét Yisroel told him, arranging the injection arrays. “What you have is an ‘inactive’ mutant genome. For what we call an ‘active’ mutant genome, the trigger comes from a chemical compound released in the womb, or by the brain during puberty. High-stress situations, such an instance of life-or-death, can provide a late trigger as the brain releases the chemical as a last resort. The radiation will be enough to trick your brain into releasing the trigger chemical, which will activate the first gene in the sequence. We call that gene the binder, because its activation primes the cells for restructuring to accept the powers coded in the rest of the genome-”

 _“One minute!”_ Doctor Stark announced. _“Clear the floor!”_

“We’re tricking your body into thinking that what _we_ coded into the serum is what your _DNA_ says your mutation should be,” Doctor Ros finished quickly. “But really it won’t be a mutation at all.”

“The _radiation,_ ” Steve insisted weakly as Doctor Bét Yisroel took hold of top of the radiation chamber.

“Has been calculated exactly so as not to cause an unforeseen reaction with either the serum or your mutant genome,” the scientist assured him, and closed the chamber.

Doctor Stark yelled something Steve couldn’t hear through the thick walls of the chamber, and then there was _light._

Nobody had told him it was going to _hurt._

Everything _stretched,_ and surely bodies weren’t supposed to move like that; supposed to feel like everything was _expanding_ and unraveling. He could feel the pull on his bones and with all that tension something would have to give, he knew that from the factories, and the only thing to give was his skeleton- the Alexandrian scientists were going to pull his irradiated, shattered body out of this chamber and Bucky was going to be stranded here and probably join one of the companies shipping out and Steve would never know how he did, because he was going to die in here and this wasn’t battle, this wasn’t _honorable-_

This was some sort of sickness, some sort of science and surely science was next to magic to the gods, and his soul would go to Helheim and Bucky would die in the war and go to Valhalla, just like he should, or survive and get married and have kids and then when he felt himself start to go sign up with a policing company and go to Mississippi to die in battle with the bandits and criminals _there_ and _then-_

He _couldn’t_ die. Not here; not now.

The pain changed from unbearable to quietly uncomfortable, the sort of ache he got when he tried to do too much in one shift, and the light faded away. He was still blinking, trying to get his vision to clear, when the top of the chamber came off. Some people were talking to him, and he thought it was probably Doctors Bét Yisroel and Ros, and helped him step out.

It looked like _everyone_ had come down from the gallery; there was the BINYAN Director and a very composed woman who was probably one of his assistants or something, and the scientists, and Bucky with Mrs. Bét Yisroel in the children in the back, and the man with the gun-

The trigger clicked back and the shot was deafening at this close a range, and enhanced senses must have been something the serum gave him because he was _used_ to loud noises from the factories but _this_ was a whole new level of-

A dead weight on his right arm jerked him down, suddenly, and Mrs. Bét Yisroel screamed. Without putting much thought into it, Steve shoved Doctor Ros, still supporting him on his left, behind the bulk of the radiation chamber, and lunged at where the man with the gun had been.

He wasn’t there now- he was running out the door, clutching something, and the Director’s assistant or whoever she was had taken out her own gun and was shooting at him, and Doctor Stark was yelling: _“He’s taken the rest of the serum somebody **stop** him!”_, Steve headed off in pursuit, Doctor Bét Yisroel’s blood drying on the side of his shirt.

-

The BINYAN complex on Pharos Ktana was full of palmprint locks, DNA testers, retina scanners, magnetized doors, and good old-fashioned low-tech key locks. Pharos Ktana, Steve had been told, was the securest portion of the entire city of Alexandria.

The assassin completely bypassed everything by breaking a window and jumping out. Steve followed, unthinking, and found himself dropping a full story into the water around the island. The assassin was swimming for deeper water and Steve floundered, trying to sort himself out, before managing to power after the man. The small personal boats pulled their horns and tried to avoid the two of them- these were commercial, public waters, not for swimming- but it was hard to turn at high speeds in the harbor, and you were likely to run into someone else.

Steve _had_ to get out of the water.

He caught up to the assassin a good couple hundred yards from shore and grabbed him, attempting to stay afloat and upright as the man thrashed and kicked at him, trying to get away-

There was a boat horn, far, _far_ too close; and Steve kicked away _hard._

The assassin, shoved away by Steve’s movement, drifted a few feet further in the opposite direction.

That was the only reason why the boat didn’t kill him instantly.

Steve watching, treading water, as the blood and bits of flesh drifted on the harbor waters, given a slightly blue sheen from the exploded serum capsules. He stayed there until a BINYAN boat arrived with the Director and Doctors Ros and Stark, who pulled him out of the water and wrapped him up in a dry blanket. The harbor police came roaring up a moment later and fished out the top half of the very dead assassin, and started dropping cordon nets and buoys to keep boat traffic out of the area.

“Don’t _do_ that,” Stark scolded.  “You just got out of a _highly_ experimental medical procedure that’s _never_ been done before – we didn’t even get your baselines, we have _no idea_ what you might have been exposed to –”

“He was doing his job,” Doctor Ros reminded him gently.  “Let’s just get him back to shore – you worried everyone like that, Steve, running off.  Some of the BINYAN people had to tackle your friend to keep him from going after you.”

-

Steve couldn’t be upset, not really.  Maybe he would have been justified, after the fuss Bucky kicked up over him taking BINYAN’s tests without telling him he was going to – but Bucky was his own man, and it’s not like he’s kept it a secret that he wanted to fight.

“I get it,” Steve said. “I do. Remember how much I just wanted to _go_ when we were still in Vinland?”

“You _still_ want to go,” Bucky said, slumping against the wall.

 He had an army uniform now, a _proper_ one, decorated with rank signs Steve didn’t know the significance of, and the Alexandrian white sun-in-glory around the ‘A’ on the dark blue arm patch, showing his new membership in one of the city army units. The regiment patch immediately below said ‘107’.

 “They’re keeping me for observation, so they know their procedure won’t wear off or the radiation didn’t stick around,” Steve told him. BINYAN had given him a room for the duration of his stay, with books to read, both in Skandi Norse and Alexandrian, one of the scroll computers to practice his writing on, and free reign on the food. It wasn’t going to be an uncomfortable stay, by any means. Elisheva Bét Yisroel had even added him into her house computer as a registered guest, which meant the city computer network recognized him. “They’ll make sure I’m not going to collapse any time soon, and then I’ll follow you out to the front- just leave me a job to do, okay?”

Bucky managed a smile for him, and ruffled his hair.

“Don’t wait too long, or I can’t make any promises about that.” 

-

_When the army reached Boeotia, the Thebans something to something Mardoniusto make a halt: “He would not,” they told him, “find anywhere a more something place in which to something his something; and their advice to him was that he should go no something, but something himself there, and there take measures to subdue all Greece without something a blow. If the Greeks, who had held together up till now, still something united among themselves, it would be difficult for the whole something to overcome them by something of something. But if you do as we something,” they something to say, “you something easily something the direction of all their something. Send presents to the men of who are something in the several something, and by so doing you something something something them. After that, it will be a light task, with the help of such as side with you, to bring under all your something.”_

Steve snapped the book shut, resisting the urge to do something childish (like kick the walls).  He had been trapped in here for a _month_.  Trapped inside while good men and women were dying at the hands of the Franx.  It made his blood _burn_.  (Not literally.  Because with all of the testing they were doing, Steve was pretty sure that he’d know if his blood was actually burning.)

And with Bucky out there, fighting, Steve could barely force himself to stay where he was.  Without Bucky, he was _alone_.

“Captain?”

Steve winced, turning towards the speaker.  That was another thing.  What right had he to the title of ‘captain,’ when he hadn’t fought a single battle?  “Yes?”

The man was taller than he by a good few inches, and was wearing a square of black leather over one eye.  “Aren’t you supposed to be in 459 with Doctor Alspeth Ros?”

Steve winced.  “Probably, what time is it?”

The man moved from the doorway.  “Sixteen-twenty-two past dawn.  What happened to your clock?”

Steve stared at the floor.  Suddenly, he felt four feet tall again.  “Broken.”

The man shook his head.  “Gods-damned tech.  If _I_ were runnin’ this boat…”  He walked away without another word.

Steve hurried to room 459 and palmed it open.  “Doctor Alspeth Ros?”

Alspeth looked up from one of her computers, her dark hair wisping around her face.  “How many times have I told you to call me Alspeth, Steve?”

Steve sat down in one of the two chairs in Alspeth’s office.  “Sixty-three times.”

Alspeth winced.  Steve leaned forward.  Alspeth had bruised eyes from lack of sleep, and her clothing hung dangerously on her thin frame.  She looked tormented.  “Are you alright, Doc- Alspeth?  Did your father do something?”

Alspeth put her head in her hands.  “Not my father – I haven’t heard from him since he joined the Avrika regiment.  No, there’s something – I heard – it’s – how much do you know about what’s going on out on the front?”  A glint of gold caught Steve’s eye – Alspeth was playing with an unadorned ring on her middle left finger.

“Not much,” Steve attempted to keep his irritation out of his voice.  “Kesurga is still under siege, Byzantium’s still sabotaging the trains _from_ Kesurga, and the first official Vinland regiment was sent out twenty-two days ago.”

Alspeth twisted her ring silently, seeming to draw courage from the piece of jewelry.  “They don’t want you to know,” she said slowly.  “They said it would disrupt the scientific analysis and observation, but I think – I think that you should _know_.”  Her voice lifted in pitch at the end, almost hysterically.

Steve stood up.  “Alspeth, _what is it_?”

Alspeth let out a harsh breath that was almost a sob.  “The 107th Alexandrian Regiment was taken.  By HYDRA.  BINYAN has declared them missing, presumed dead.”

The world went silent.  HYDRA.  HYDRA had Bucky.  And BINYAN wasn’t going to go after him.

Steve turned to Alspeth mechanically, making the motions while his mind ran ahead.  “Thank you, Alspeth,” he said.  “The 107th will owe you their lives.”

Steve’s mind began moving swiftly.

Room 459 had a couple of computers in it, Doctor Ros’s testing equipment for her biology work, and her library, crammed into as much wall space as she could salvage from office. Steve found himself cataloguing it all as his serum-enhanced brain set to working out an escape plan.

This was the Alexandrian Level One, and the fourth floor of BINYAN Building 4. It wasn’t close enough to the ground to jump out the window.

There wasn’t anyone who escorted him to and from Doctor Ros’s office, and he still had time before anyone was expecting him somewhere else and came looking for him. But the DNA locks would track where he went, and he didn’t know if he had access to all the doors he’d need.

Well, say he got two floors down, got into an open room with a window, and jumped out _there-_

The next step would be getting off Pharos Ktana and across the Mediterranean.

Boats. He’d steal a boat.

He _did_ know how to work a boat?

Steve told himself that he was a _Viking,_ and if he couldn’t figure out how to work a boat, he was a disgrace to his ancestors and _deserved_ to get caught trying to escape.

“You’re going to try to escape,” Doctor Ros said.

“No I’m not,” Steve said immediately.

“Uh-huh,” Doctor Ros replied, clearly unconvinced. “So what’s the plan?”

“Find a lower floor, jump out a window, steal a boat, go to… wherever HYDRA is.”

“Franx,” she supplied. “Narbonne, really, the bit of it that sticks up into Franx. That’s where the 107th went missing.”

“Right,” Steve said. “Steal a boat, go to Franx.”

“Do you _know_ Franx?”

“No. But I can’t let that stop me.”

“Of course,” Doctor Ros said. She sifted through the things on her desk, came up with a thin board of dark material, and hooked her tablet sheet into it. The magnetized edges stiffened and clamped to the board, turning rigid. “Captain Alexandria, if you’d step this way.”

“But-” he started to protest as Doctor Ros stepped out into the hallway.

“Just follow me, Steve.”

Alspeth led him to the elevator, gave it her name, Steve’s name, and asked for Boat Dock 7. The elevator dropped down below the ground floor, and there was a slight hitch in its motion Steve had never experienced before. He grabbed the elevator hand rail, waiting for the entire contraption to fail and them to fall to their deaths. In his head, he was seeing fire and explosions.

“Calm down, Captain,” Doctor Ros said. “We’re just changing direction.”

 _“Direction?”_ he asked incredulously; and sure enough, they started to move sideways.

“The boat docks are in sections. The elevator will take you there as easily as it will between floors. There’s another car behind us that’s moved into the shaft by now to take care of the floor-to-floor traffic.”

 The elevator opened onto a columned cavern, the first dark part of Alexandria Steve had seen since his arrival a month ago. The dock lighting was dim, providing enough visibility to prevent anyone from stepping off the boardwalk or crashing when they tried to dock, but nothing like the brilliance of the world above. The entire space was filled with the gentle slosh of water, magnified by the emptiness.

Doctor Ros led him to Port 616, taking the turns on the boardwalk with the ease of long knowledge. When they reached it, she suddenly pulled the tablet board out from under her arm and started looking very intense, like she was back in the lab running a test.

“Hold your breath and jump in the water and stay down as long as you can,” she ordered.

 _“What?”_ Steve demanded.

Alspeth rolled her eyes in the direction of an approaching dock guard.

“Jump in. I’ll tell him it’s for science, and unless I report that you drowned, nobody will care.”

Steve was incredibly doubtful about this plan, but, Doctor Ros seemed like she was his best way out-

He jumped into the water of the Boat Dock 7 and watched from under the surface as the dock guard stopped for a moment to talk to Doctor Ros, seemed satisfied with whatever answer he got, and continued on his way.

Steve stayed under until he _had_ to breathe, and then resurfaced.

“Nine minutes, sixteen seconds,” Doctor Ros said, and put it down on her tablet.

“You _timed_ it?”

“It was for science!”

Steve hauled himself back onto the boardwalk, water cascading off his shoulders. His clothes were soaked, and his eyes stung a bit from the saltwater.

Doctor Ros provided her palmprint and retina scan for the lock on the dock and the boat was released. She stuck the key in the ignition, and showed him how to steer, break, and engage the automatic drive.

“I’m going to get the navigation computer to plot your course to Narbon,” she told him. “It’s the closest coastal city to Alexandria, and the easiest to get into without being spotted. Would you check the onboard thermometer for me, please?”

“19 degrees centigrade,” he read off for her.

“One respiratory cycle completed in nine minutes sixteen seconds at 19 degrees centigrade,” she muttered to herself as she added information into her tablet. “Further field testing suggested in warmer and cooler temperatures.”

With that done, she put the tablet down in the middle of boardwalk and, before Steve could stop her, jumped off the dock as well. She resurfaced immediately, treading water, her hair floating behind her.

“I was checking the efficiency of your oxygen processing in different environments. I was going to take you out into the harbor, where the water’s much warmer; but you stole my boat and ran off to find your friend. That’s my story,” she explained. “Don’t just stand there _staring_ at me, Captain Rothgers, get going!”

-

When Doctor Phillipos, military scientist extraordinaire and Director of BINYAN, heard about Steve’s ‘daring escape’ from Pharos Ktana and Alexandria, he stared hard out his window over the Mediterranean.

“Get me Margareet Cartier,” he ordered the agent who’d come with the news. “I want her up here for briefing and deployment _immediately_. We can’t let Captain Alexandria just barrel through Franx with no strategy and no backup.”

When the agent left to get Cartier, Doctor Phillipos muttered under his breath: “Typical Viking stoneheadedness. Why the hell did we let Bét Yisroel go looking in Vinland?”


	3. Chapter Three

Narbon had been a lesson in sneaking- namely, Steve realized he was _terrible_ at it. He’d fumbled his way through Alexandrian trying to pay someone for passage out of the city north, and the woman he’d approached immediately started looking nervous and checking for ways to flee.

Steve felt guilty about that, so he paid her what he thought was probably the going rate for a slow train ticket, and just walked himself out of the city.

On one hand, it turned out that one of side effects of living in poverty in Vinland was that he’d _vastly_ overestimated the price of a slow train ticket in Europe, so he was out of money; but on the other hand, it wouldn’t have done him any good because it wasn’t like he could open his mouth without everyone knowing he was a foreigner, so it wasn’t like he could have bought anything _anyway._

He stuck to traveling at night and camping rough, hoping for some sign that he was in the right area. Steve felt like he should be good at wilderness survival, and he didn’t kill himself by eating something poisonous- or the serum rendered him immune to all naturally-occurring poisons, he’d have to ask Doctor Ros about that when he got back to Alexandria- so by the time he happened across a HYDRA cargo truck, about a week and a half after landing in Narbon, he was more than ready.

He followed the truck from the side of the road, hiding in the natural cover, until the truck led him to the base. Steve watched, still concealed, as the truck parked, the back opened, and what looked like hired workers started unloading. He watched long enough to see five of them manhandle a large, long rectangular metal container that looked uncomfortably like a coffin out of the back before deciding it was time to try his luck.

The only god to pray to in this case was Loki, and what sort of a Viking would he be if he did that? He’d be a _Finn,_ that was what; and maybe the Vikings and the Finns were _temporarily_ sharing a monarchy, but that didn’t mean they could just go around taking each other’s deities.

Steve darted from hiding and managed to merge into the hired workers without anyone apparently noticing, which he decided was a good sign. He picked up one of the last crates from the truck and followed the other workers carrying loads into the building. A uniformed HYDRA soldier directed them into a room some ways into the compound- Steve recognized the type from Alexandria.

It was a lab.

The long metal box from earlier, it turned out, _was_ a type of coffin-like thing- it had been stood upright, and the front split into two panels that slid away, revealing the glass below and the _man_ inside it, underneath.

Steve wasn’t sure if he was dead or unconscious or _what_ , but he didn’t look hurt. Just like he hadn’t brushed his hair in- well, forever.

The HYDRA scientists were doing something to the coffin contraption, hooking in some of those machines that went _beep_ and some of the machines that went _ch-ch-briiiiing_ whenever something significant happened. Steve put down his crate, as directed by the soldier, and noticed that different workers were prying their tops off, revealing contents wrapped in cloth and packed in hay. A woman approached with a prybar, and Steve debating taking it from her and attacking the soldier.

She set the tongue of the prybar to the top of the crate and levered. The top came away in a whiny squeal that hurt his ears, revealing a dull metal circle, slightly concave, partially covered by some of the wrapping cloth.

Before he could decide on anything else, one of the scientists screamed.

Everyone whirled to look at the noise and _the man in the metal coffin had moved._ He was angled forward in his cage now, the angle of his bent arm placing his fist in the vicinity of the scientist’s stomach. It looked like the scientist had gotten too close to the glass, and now had a gutful of metal claws, judging by the points jutting from the man’s lower back.

Steve knew a good distraction when he saw one. Before anyone could react, he’d taken the prybar off the woman, knocked her out, picked up the metal disk, and attacked the soldier with both.

By the time that soldier was down, there was another to take his place, and a lot of shouting, and people wavering between dealing with the aggressive workman and the man dragging his claws through the coffin glass in a clear bid for freedom.

Steve found himself crouching behind the metal disk- it was shield, actually, it had the handles for one- and pointing the prybar like a sword.

He needed to stop that, immediately.

The prybar was used to fell another soldier, whose gun Steve took, and he opened fire. Most of the soldiers seemed to have decided that discretion was the better part of valor, the cowards, and had retreated from the room; leaving only scientists and workers who were trying desperately, in their confusion, not to get killed.

There was movement out of the corner of Steve’s eye and somehow it was just _right_ to take the shield in hand and throw it, discus-like, in that general direction. He heard the dull _bang-clunk-bang_ as it bounced off first the new HYDRA soldier’s head, then the wall, and finally the glass front of the coffin, cracking it spectacularly, before returning to his hand.

Everyone in the room was hiding, dead, or pretending to be dead, as far as Steve could tell. For the moment, the only sound was that of the man punching the glass from the inside and it breaking, all over the floor.

He stepped out of the coffin, picking glass out of his hand. The wounds healed over immediately.

“Thanks,” he said gruffly, and eyed the shield. “Y’know, the scientists were saying that was Stephanos Domitius Corbulo’s shield. They’ve been hunting down the artefacts of ‘lesser religions’ for _years_ now.”

“And what did they want you for?” Steve asked, slotting the shield back onto his arm. The weight comforted him.

“I’m one of artefacts, kid,” the man told him. “I’m older than the Antonines by a long shot, even if _these-_ ”

He kicked one of the dead scientists, and whatever language he was speaking in, it was a grave insult.

“-stole the specifics from me.”

“Stevin Rothgers,” Steve introduced himself. “I’m launching a rescue mission.”

“Logan,” the man said. “And you’re a godsforsaken idiot if you think _this_ is a rescue mission.”

-

Steve learned quickly that if you offered Logan a chance to fight somebody, preferably to stab them in unpleasantly painful paces, he’d go anywhere with you.

“Already been everywhere,” Logan grunted when Steve commented on it, about fifteen dead bodies later. “And none of it’s changed enough since last time to be interesting.”

“I thought you didn’t remember?” Steve asked, trotting after him.

“Stuff gets through,” Logan told him absently. “Now here; we’ve got the experimentation rooms.”

Whatever his attitude was like, Logan had proved an invaluable accidental addition to the rescue mission. Whether out of a burning desire to see that the rescue mission was worth the name (Logan’s given reason for sticking around), or a sort of admiring pity for his ambition (Steve’s suspicion about Logan’s _real_ reason); the man was using his extensive knowledge as a captive of multiple HYDRA bases to get Steve around without getting the entire HYDRA force focused on him at once.

“The prisoner cells will be through there,” Logan continued, pointing down the empty hallway. “That’s where they get the poor bastards they experiment on.”

At the look on Steve’s face, he sniffed the air.

“That one’s being used,” he said, pointing at a door.

Steve rushed for it and shoved it open. It looked empty; but a longer look showed him a scientist off in a side room, and man strapped to an operating table.

He gunned down the scientist before she could turn and notice his presence, then hurried forward to free the man-

The shield nearly got dropped, clanging, to the floor when he could see the soldier’s face clearly.

 _“Bucky!”_ he gasped.

“You’re a damn sorry excuse for a Valkyrie, Steve,” Bucky mumbled. His eyes were shut, and Steve couldn’t tell if it was from exhaustion or torture or poisoning or _what-_ “You’re lucky I don’t give a shit.”

“C’mon Bucky, I’m getting you out of here,” Steve told him, trying to work at the buckles keeping his friend down.

“Heh,” Bucky managed, and cracked an eye open. A moment passed.

“Keep talking to me,” Steve ordered, remembering what the doctors in Alexandria had had him do after the serum. “Don’t pass out on me, you’ve got stay awake-”

“We taking this one?” Logan asked from the doorway.

“ _This_ one-”

The buckles were _infuriating_ and _not cooperating_ ; Steve just ripped one out of the table.

“Gods be damned, Rothgers,” Bucky said, eying the rest of the belts incredulously.

“-is the reason I _came!_ ” Steve finished angrily. “I’ll be along in a minute, Logan, go get everyone else out.”

Logan disappeared down the hall, and Steve got the rest of the buckles and belts undone.

 _“No,”_ Bucky said, right before Steve was about to pick him up. He was staring past Steve, towards the room where the dead scientist was. “No- _Steve-_ ”

Steve turned, and found himself facing a nightmare.

It was a man, it seemed, in the officer’s uniform for HYDRA-

But his _face-_

 _“Red Skull,”_ Bucky whispered.

“As apt a name as any,” the man said, and pulled a gun on him. It was strange- bulky where it shouldn’t be, blue vents glowing against the dark metal.

Immediately, without thinking, Steve stepped between the two.

The man hesitated at the sight of the shield, raised to keep Bucky under cover.

“Stevin Rothgers,” he said finally, eyes narrowing. “Captain _Alexandria._ Bét Yisroel’s pet. How- _fitting_ that you took Stephanos Corbulo’s shield.”

“Yohann Schmidt,” Steve guessed, remembering the name of the man in charge of HYDRA from the assassination in Alexandria.

“Ah, _Captain_ , I see you know me!”

Schmidt shifted, slightly, his new position placing his aim just past the shield. Steve followed the movement- he wasn’t letting HYDRA get anywhere _near_ hurting Bucky again.

“I will never understand, Captain, why such a mind as Bét Yisroel would go to the _Vikings_ , of all people, to find a test subject for his mutant improvement project. You have such a _terrible_ disposition towards- How should I say it?- _negative genetic potential_. A mutant producing a child with any other human?- A mutant! But a _Viking-_ ”

He spat the word at Steve and Bucky.

“- _human,_ to the point where the exceptions are statistically insignificant!”

“Steve, tell him we’re not statistically insignificant,” Bucky complained.

“Tell him yourself,” Steve retorted. Schmidt kept moving, trying to get a clear shot past his shield with the blue glowing gun; and Steve was trying to simply block and not set him off until he could get Bucky out of the way.

_Come **on,** Logan, notice it’s been more than a minute!_

Steve reached back, carefully, and started to pull Bucky off the operating table. Bucky tried to get off on his own, stumbled, and nearly collapsed, saving himself only by grabbing onto the back of Steve’s shirt.

Schmidt sneered at the weakened man.

“Even the mongrel breeding ground of Vinland couldn’t change them!”

“You’re thinking of Mississippi,” Bucky told him, shakily trying to stay standing.

“Not the _time,_ ” Steve hissed.

“The humans’ time has come, Captain!” Schmidt declared. “They were too slow in the evolutionary race! Too weak! To allow their genes to continue in the breeding pool is an affront to our entire species! People like your Bét Yisroel and Doctor Sebastian Shaw think we should _allow_ them to _keep living,_ or manipulate their genetics artificially to give them a semblance of mutation-”

“Can you run if I tell you to?” Steve muttered to Bucky. It was no good, waiting longer for Logan to maybe decide to come back and check what was taking so long.

“You want me to get your angry friend?” he asked.

“Just get _away,_ ” Steve told him.

“-but an artificial mutant gene will never breed true! Alexandria’s so-called _ethics,_ the Jews’ pacifism, the Roman gods’ indifference, and even the _Hekassir,_ who _perverted_ the strength and decisiveness shown to humanity by the Aesir in the face of internal weakness; _the Hekassir_ , the _birthplace_ of our modern attitude towards mutations-”

“I thought that was the Finns,” Steve said.

_“The **FINNS-!** ”_

Apparently, the thought of the Finns sent Schmidt into an incoherent rage just as effectively as it would for any fundamentalist Viking.

“Run,” Steve told Bucky.

He distracted Schmidt from Bucky’s dash for the door by punching him in the face with the shield.

The strange gun went off, too close to him, as Schmidt staggered back from the blow. Steve didn’t notice the black, smoking crater it left in the floor, blue vapors dissipating into the air above it, because the shield _sang_ from the impact _._ He could feel the resonance through his bones, on just the right note, clear and somehow in harmony with itself, a low and high tone, both just on the edge of hearing.

He touched it, gently, to stop the vibrations. It felt like a physical loss when it cut off suddenly.

Schmidt snarled at him, and shot the gun on purpose this time. Steve ducked behind the shield and the blue beam was absorbed into the metal.

Proper Vikings didn’t retreat, but it was time to regroup. Steve backed out of the room, blocking more gunshots, and then sprinted down the hall towards the prisoner cells.

The hallway emptied out onto a wide room, Steve ducked around what must have been the cells, but seemed more like communal cages. The metal locks showed bright new scars where Logan’s claws had sheared them off, and there was fighting further in. Through the cell bars, Steve could make out a factory floor, and once he burst into the fighting there, he noted tables of half-assembled blue glow guns just like Schmidt’s. He grabbed some of the batteries and stuffed them in his pocket for later- Alexandria could figure this out.

The loading doors on the far end of the floor were open, the trucks visible beyond, and there were freed soldiers about to drive a tank through to start laying waste to factory machinery.

 _“Out of the way!”_ Steve roared, and hoped everyone heard him. Either they did, or the tank was _very_ obvious, because the soldiers started to press through the HYDRA soldiers to get through the loading doors, surging around the tank, now parked and taking shots at the machinery. This time, Steve noticed the damage the blue beams could do.

There was more fighting in the base’s yard, now, and the next time he looked towards the building the group of soldiers from the tank had grabbed some friends, who had just finished blocking up the loading doors with HYDRA trucks. The HYDRA soldiers in the yard were mostly dead, and weren’t being replaced very fast- he didn’t know if that meant they were dead, or if Schmidt had them somewhere else, planning something nefarious.

The soldiers swarmed off the tank and out of the trucks, and then the tank gave one final shot into the base. There was a muffled _BOOM_ from inside, and all the windows in the base blew out, the glow of fire seeping out.

Bucky popped the hatch of the tank and tumbled down the side trying to get out. Steve rushed over.

His friend grinned at him from the dirt.

“ _Told_ Gavriel I could hit it!” he said.

Steve just shook his head, hauled him up, and started walking for friendly territory.

-

Steve and the others had been walking for close to four hours when it started to rain.  Several of the men began grumbling under their breath, but Bucky just stumbled along beside him silently.  Taking tail, Logan followed like a soggy nightmare, his hair somehow still spiky despite the torrential downpour.

Steve was beginning to wonder whether Thor himself was around somewhere, what with the thunder and lightning of the storm, when he heard voices.

“Halt!” he called, holding up a hand and hoping that the others could hear him.  “There’s someone out there.”

Everyone stopped, shivering slightly in the pounding rain (except Logan, who _wasn’t shivering_ ). 

“… _told_ you to land on higher ground, but _no_ , Howard Antonius Stark knows _best_!”

“It was perfectly fine a moment ago!”

“Who was born in Narbonne, you or me?”

“…You.”

Out of the pouring rain, two people slowly came into view.  One of them made Bucky groan in irritation “ _Stark_ ,” while the other was a neat-looking woman wearing a body-length water-resistant suit and cap.

When they drew eve, the woman stuck out her hand.  “Margareet Cartier,” she said crisply.  “Cryptography, Cartography, and Intelligence.  BINYAN sent me to help you out.”

Steve took a moment to wonder how the woman managed to seem so neat and crisp despite the waves of water pouring down on them all as he shook her hand.

“Stevin Rothgers,” he replied.  “I thought they’d want to drag me back?”

Margareet shrugged.  “You’re in the warzone now, Captain, no point in wasting a good soldier.”

“What’s _he_ doing here?” Bucky demanded, pointing his chin at Stark.

Margareet shrugged.  “Tech support.  Which reminds me.”  She threw something at Steve – a bag filled with little metal knobs the size of a pinky-fingernail.  “Commlinks.  Don’t lose them.  It’s how we’re keeping in contact with each other.” 

Steve looked at the bag, and nodded slowly.  Margareet smiled, and jerked her head. 

“Come on.  There’s a town three miles south that is extremely anti-Franx, and my aunt lives there.”

-

The Howling Commandos were all over Europe, chasing HYDRA operatives and destroying HYDRA bases. Margareet’s intelligence from BINYAN had them first in Tolosse, where they took out the small HYDRA cell attached to the Franx occupying government. A hop to southernmost Narbonne in the area outside Tarrago was a sludgy, muddy, squelching affair where Steve learned that being a supersoldier only _helped_ to pull his feet out of summer rains muck, not _keep_ him from getting stuck in the first place.

They were still trying to dry out when BINYAN sent them to Tolida. It was their first HYDRA base after their escape, and the only setback were the labs, which were much more heavily guarded than expected, though the work was by no means expert. There was a lot shield-bashing, and afterwards, Bucky said it had done his heart a world of good to see him lay into the enemy like a proper Viking. Logan was not impressed, but Logan was never impressed.

Morita and Fallwirt argued names the entire way to Birgandum.

“Bjorns I get,” Morita said. “I can see where somebody would look at somebody his size in a fur cloak charging at you with a sword and Viking warcry and think ‘bear’.”

“I know Logan,” Bucky said. “That’s ‘little hollow’. And he _is_ a little hollow on the memory side, isn’t he?”

“Shut it,” Logan told him. “I’m gonna remember _you,_ Bjorns, you’re really freakin’ _unforgettable._ ”

“Fallwirt?” Steve asked in a vain attempt to keep Bucky and Logan off each other. He had to stick his shield between the two them to manage it.

“It’s a family mutation,” Gumrikh grumbled. “We’re lucky, but it skips a generation sometimes. I didn’t used to think I had it.”

From Birgandum they had to race back across Hispania and Iberia to catch a boat to Roma, but Justin V had already dealt with the HYDRA problem there, so they rerouted to Florentia, where everyone had a lot of fun. Steve got to carom his shield through alleyways, Bucky thought the sightlines were amazing, Dugan got to hotwire a boat, and Margareet comprehensively dismantled two successive shifts of perimeter guard.

In Medyolana they only managed to partially stop a shipment of chemicals and mysterious biological samples because HYDRA managed to block their commlinks; and though the Commandos did well for themselves despite not being able to coordinate their improvisations to the plan, people got away and things got through. Morita and Margareet wrote up the report to BINYAN on what they thought HYDRA had gotten away with and sent off the captured samples to Alexandria, custody of Doctor Alspeth Ros; and they were stopped for a few weeks while BINYAN sent Howard up to do something about their commlinks.

Howard arrived in Medyolana with new commlinks two-thirds completed and new orders. They were shoved through the Alpines, combing the major passes for HYDRA stations and Franx saboteurs. Everyone was cold and wet and tired, and hated every second of it. Logan snapped at them all one night for complaining about not being able to light a fire, something about never being on the British campaign, and couldn’t explain himself. Bucky decided to take offence on behalf of all Albans and Celts, and the rest of the Commandoes had to sleep between the two of them for a couple days.

Steve asked Margareet to get them a new assignment, only to find out she’d already sent one.

Logan and Dernier together made a devastating front team, they found as they fought their way into Kesurga, heralded to the city defenders by a wall of screaming, terrified Belgundan alliance soldiers and fire. Gavriel and Dugan got them out of Kesurga with significantly less pyrotechnics. 

Burgunda and Belgunda were wastelands.

Thirty miles southeast of Sezares, Steve had just started the assault of a HYDRA base of mysterious purposes when it exploded, an inferno rising and burning debris and shrapnel flying everywhere. The Howling Commandoes straightened up, minutes later, and stared at the annihilated complex.

“That wasn’t me,” Dernier said into the silence.

They had to run for it from there, hiding in Sezares for a few days only because Logan kept impaling anyone who recognized them as Belgundan alliance soldiers. A mad dash for the coast, a conveniently-placed fishing boat, and previously-unused Viking skills later, they were in Britain. Logan was irritable, Bucky and Timothy were overjoyed, Gavriel said often that he felt like he was drowning on dry land, and Margareet managed to get a hold of Alexandria, and BINYAN told them to proceed to Woodhenge, and from Woodhenge to Lughevashem.

“Leuw-ghva-shem?” Gavriel asked, puzzled, when it saw it on the signpost. “ _‘Mouth of God’?_ I knew your King converted when she married our Princess, but I didn’t know she was _that_ much of a convert.”

“Lou-ay-vahs-hem,” Dugan corrected him. “Lugheva was the wife of Raganhar II, so everyone called the village she was from Lugheva’s Home.”

“Well, it still looks like ‘Mouth of God’ to _me._ ”

They weren’t told who was going to be waiting for them in Lughevashem.

“We thought we’d take the opportunity to meet you,” said Eydís, called the Viking, _King of the Vikings and Finns_ when the Lughevashem guards stopped them on the city limits. She was riding a horse, accompanied by a Judean woman who had to have been her wife and Queen, Keshet, and a man about a decade older than Steve.

It took a little while for Steve to notice him, because he was trying _very hard_ to stay composed in the presence of _Eydís the Viking_. Bucky and Timothy were managing just fine, and Steve resented them a little for it.

The man eventually came to talk to him over dinner in the Long Hall. The King and Queen were presiding from the head of the table, and the Howling Commandoes were on their best behavior.

“Captain,” the man said, holding out his hand. They grasped each other’s forearms, Steve trying to figure out if he was some sort of bodyguard.

Margareet leaned backward and told him quietly: “Prince Zohar of the Vikings, son of Eydís the Viking and Princess Keshet Bét Geula of Judea, General of the Viking and Finnish forces in Europe.”

Steve froze, smile plastered in place.

“I’ve heard great stories about your accomplishments in battle,” the prince told him, politely ignoring Steve’s inability to properly process thought at the moment. “I’d like to sit with you and your men and hear some about it.”

Margareet shoved Gavriel over until there was space between them on the bench.

“Shalom Adnati,” he murmured to Zohar. Zohar grinned at him, pleased to hear the language he’d grown up with, and they held a brief conversation, Judean citizen to Judean royalty, before Zohar asked loudly in Skandi for someone to regale him with their greatest accomplishments in battle.

“He said he thought I’d get along well with his sister!” Bucky exclaimed intermittently on the boat ride from Lughevashem to Treve. “Me! And the princess!”

“Yeah, we heard,” Steve told him, unable to keep from smiling. “You and Naomi Eydísdottir, lounging around in the palace in Jerusalem, nibbling on fruit and boasting about all the ways you know to kill a man-”

Bucky threw his pillow at him.  

In Treve Steve felt useless, and Bucky felt useless, and Timothy grumbled about espionage not being in the true spirit of warfare. Margareet took Dernier, Gavriel, and Gumrikh out for days at a time, hunting leads of HYDRA establishments in the Franx-occupied areas of Hekassir.

Logan told them all to quit their whining and let him sleep; so a few weeks in Morita, in true Venitz’yan fashion, went out shopping and hunted for bargains to do their resupplying while they had time. Steve, Bucky, and Dugan came along.

Steve bought some things for Elisheva Bét Yisroel- a British wool-and-lace tablecloth with matching napkins set, some toys and books for the children, and a Finnish gold-and-amber necklace that Morita had helpfully haggled down for him. He’d picked up an illustrated botanical text on medicinal plants from the Japanese Empire for Doctor Ros when Bucky found him staring at a large wall map of the distributions of religions around the world.

Bucky pulled a face when he realized what it was.

“They didn’t say the Finns have the same thing as us, do they?” he asked.

“They’re labeled Aesir, just like us,” Steve said, making a sweeping motion with his free arm to encompass the swath of pale red from Vinland through Greenland, Iceland, the British Isles, Skandia, Hekassir, and across the continent from the thin strip of water separating Viking Skandia from the Finns, all the way their Pacific Ocean coast, where it ran into the lilac showing the Shinto of Japan.

“I can’t _believe_ people are still saying that,” Bucky grouched. “The only one they care about is Loki, it’s a disgrace. Finland should be green or blue or something, and they should label it _‘The Idiots Who Think The Liesmith Is A Hero’_.”

“Other people have green and blue,” Steve said, pointing the lands east and south of Judea. “Green’s the Muslim Empire, and the blue-”

He squinted at the blue blob in Turkey.

“-Christians?”

“Whatever. If you’ve paid for that book, Morita’s done shopping.”

Steve shipped his purchases to Alexandria from Treve, and the Howling Commandos crept down the western border of the Hekassir Empire, being very careful to stay on the Hekassir side of the Hekassir-Sarmatian border. The Sarmatians were _not_ the type of people you made even _think_ about having a reason to be angry; and BINYAN had sent, through Margareet, a message that said nothing but: _‘Something happening in Sarmatia. Situation highly unclear. DO NOT ENGAGE.’_

A quick swing through Byzantine territory, where _still_ nothing was happening, and they were in Venitz’ya in enough time to see Morita’s parents, who had been _certain_ that their ‘darling Yecuvi’ had been lost to the terrors of the barbarian Sarmatian horse-warriors, and foil a surprise HYDRA attack on the Venitz’yan train station.

That was where the trouble with the Mediterranean Rail began. 

-

Over the past four winters, Steve had discovered that what he had thought of as snow was _nothing_ compared to what most of Europe got for four to nine months out of the year. 

This year was no exception.  Crouching in the burnt-out wreckage of a HYDRA base they had destroyed, the Howling Commandos were hiding from the incoming snowstorm near Aquinicum when Margareet began to swear.  Loudly.  And in several languages.

Steve felt his cheeks begin to burn when she drifted into Skandi oaths – his people were pretty good at crude and outright offensive, and Margareet seemed to know every last oath.

Attempting to warm up by the fire, Bucky scooted away, throwing wary glances at the infuriated woman.

Stark, who was obliviously attempting to improve something that _might_ have been a computer, looked up.  “What’s the word from Alexandria, Mags?”

“ _Don’t_ call me that!” Margareet snarled.  “Gods-damned boal gadya pilakta khumra timid-liquabrum – some hildeput decided that the Mediterranean Rail is a problem, so they’re attacking the _Sarmatian Line!_ ”

Stark dropped his mechanical thing, Bucky and Timothy fell over backwards, Yecuvi and Gavriel swore, and Gumrikh made a sound like he had swallowed his tongue.  Jacques had frozen in place, and Steve felt the same – how was he supposed to process that?  What idiot attacked anyone within the borders of Sarmatia?

“We’ll hafta send ‘em a letter.”

Everyone turned to gape at Logan, who never stopped cleaning his gun. 

“A letter?” Gumrikh choked.  “You want to send a _letter_ to _Sarmatia_?”

Logan looked up.  “Sure.  Be polite.”

Steve again attempted to process yet another contradiction – the man who enjoyed spearing people through the gut, recommending that they be polite.

At this rate, Steve’s brain would die before he ever got out of this base camp.

Logan looked around.  “Well?  Anyone know what language Sarmatians read?”

There was a moment of awkward silence, and then Gumrikh said “Finnish?  I think?”

“Hel no,” Bucky cried.  “We are not writing a letter in crazy-writing.”

“Most Sarmatians can read formal Antonian Alexandrian,” Margareet said slowly.  “I’ll write it, and we can send it off in Aquinicum tomorrow.”

Steve nodded.  “Sounds like a plan,” he forced out.  Now they only had to figure out how to get _onto_ the Sarmatian Line before HYDRA did.

_To Whoever May Read This Letter, Greetings from BINYAN._

_It has come to our attention that HYDRA means to attack the Mediterranean Rail where it runs through Sarmatia._

_By the Hand of Margareet Cartier, Doctor of Cryptography, Cartography, and Intelligence Collation._

-

Theoretically, there was a mail drop into Sarmatia because, theoretically, there were people who actually _wanted_ to talk to the Sarmatians.

But there was no way to actually figure out if anyone had _read_ Margareet’s warning unless someone decided to check the mail drop within a reasonable period, and then whatever petty warlord that received it cared to write a reply, and there was no time to wait and see before HYDRA attacked.

The Howling Commandos spent the two weeks immediately following the mailing of the letter getting into position, trekking as quickly and unobtrusively as possible through Sarmatian territory, hoping that if they _did_ run into any Sarmatians, they’d give them a chance to explain themselves.

“At least _you_ don’t have to worry,” Gumrikh muttered at Logan one night.

“Red teeth,” Logan said cryptically, and refused to add anything else.

Steve couldn’t help but feel that their tracks in the deepening snow would lead any upset Sarmatians straight to them. BINYAN _still_ hadn’t elaborated on their original message about whatever the ‘situation’ was in Sarmatia, and none of them really wanted to be the people to find out.

A day before they hit the mountains and foothills, right on the edge of the plains, they came across a heap of corpses, human and horse, strips of mummified flesh and skin barely holding together the skeletons of the few that hadn’t been dismembered. What armor and weapons and tack that hadn’t been taken was hacked apart, trampled, and irreparably weathered; leather and steel left in the sun to rot and rust.

The Commandoes passed it in silence. Later that evening, Margareet wrote _‘Evidence that Sarmatian situation precludes after-battle funerary arrangements, either from lack of manpower or posthumous revenge. Sarmatians are fighting in uncharacteristically large force’_ in her notes for the eventual mission report to BINYAN.

Their final destination was 200 miles south of Acquinicum, down the Mediterranean Rail Sarmatian Line, in the heart of the mountains. BINYAN’s intelligence placed HYDRA’s boarding of the train on the Byzantium city stop on the Alexandria-Kesurga run, with the sabotage happening somewhere over the Sarmatian plains, closer to northward curve of Byzantine territory and the easiest place along the line to make a safe escape from. The Commandoes were to board the train by zipline, subdue or eradicate the HYDRA forces, and ride the train into Kesurga with their prisoners, where BINYAN would be waiting to take them.

Mediterranean Rail had stopped taking passengers when the war started, but supplies still had to be moved, and they were the only people who could move them. The company was officially neutral, but the Belgundan alliance saw them, rightly, as a major threat. The only reason the lines from Alexandria, Aegupt, and Judea to Hekassir, Venitz’ya, and Roma hadn’t gone down already was because one of the main priorities of the Burgundan alliance forces was to keep the Rail in service and running quickly, securing a supply line for their major cities- unfortunately, doing the same for Belgundan-allied Byzantium as well.

BINYAN was supposed to have smuggled operatives onto the train to meet the Commandoes and assist on the mission.

There were five cars on the cargo train, including the engine. The Commandoes were supposed to pair up- Steve and Bucky, Dernier and Dugan, Morita and Gumrikh, Gavriel and Margareet- and take a cargo car each, while Logan secured the engine all on his own. Dernier and Dugan had the car immediately behind the engine, and went down the line first, after Logan’s nonchalant jump off the mountain to cut his way into the engine. Then Morita and Gumrikh, Gavriel and Margareet; and finally Steve and Bucky, in the last car.

Steve burst in the rear door of the car to find the BINYAN operatives he was supposed to meet dead, and the HYDRA soldiers waiting. Steve’s shield, newly painted after the fight in Venitz’ya with a ringed Alexandrian sun-in-glory, took its first damage to the paint job as he blocked the bullets, which ricocheted and dented the cabin walls. The HYDRA soldiers retreated behind a partition near the front of the car and started taking shots. Steve shot back, covering for Bucky, who started searching for the explosives HYDRA must have taken onto the train and hidden in each car.

“Got some!” he yelled from out of Steve’s field of vision.

“Throw them off!” Dernier shouted over the comms. “Who’s got the trigger man?”

As Bucky started hauling the explosives out of their box and dropping them to the car floor, Steve advanced on the HYDRA soldiers hiding behind the partition. One of the soldiers disappeared behind the wall, and the only remaining live one went down a few seconds later.

When he was about at the partition opening, he heard an ominous _clank_.

“We may have a situation in the rear,” Steve told the rest of the Commandoes over the comms as he watched the hulking metal monster lumber towards him. It was steel, he thought, but there was the blue glow of the HYDRA weapons, brighter and lighter somehow, in the thing’s chestplate. The head was done up as a HYDRA helmet, and the _hiss-clank_ of the thing’s pneumatic steps was distracting. There was another HYDRA soldier, the one who disappeared, around here somewhe- the soldier was _inside the monster._

The man in the metal suit shot at him, and Steve raised his shield, long experience fighting the strange HYDRA energy weapons preparing him for the action- but instead of the blue beam being absorbed, like it always had been, this new, harder blue light reflected off his shield, blowing out almost a whole side of the car to his left.

An explosive packet spiraled across his peripheral vision, catching his attention.

Steve jerked his head around just in time to see the winds tear away Bucky’s momentary grip on the blown-out wall of the car; and fall.

And fall.

And fall.

The Mediterranean Rail was a feat of human engineering. The line from Alexandria to Kesurga was the first train ever built; and it was a marvel to behold. Its speed was measured in hundreds of miles per hour instead of tens, it ran on a perfectly flat track, and the elevation was higher than even than Second Level of Alexandria, which ended about forty stories above the ground.

These were mountains; and the ground was even further down.

Steve remembered only three things after that moment:

The first was Bucky’s blood on the serrated edge of the blown-out wall he’d been trying to grab. He’d cut his hand on it in the scare seconds he’d had to try and hold on.

The second was hacking the blue glowing battery out of the armor with the edge of his shield. He’d mangled the suit of armor badly as he did it, shoving the entire chestplate in- he might have crushed the soldier wearing it. He didn’t know, and he didn’t care.

The third was Margareet and Gavriel braving the miniscule walkway between their car and his to check on him when neither he nor Bucky answered their comms after Steve’s last, cryptic comment. They heaved the car’s front door open to find him sitting on the top of the fallen suit, battery cradled between his torso and shield for safekeeping, staring blankly out the hole in the car.

-

Sitting on the docks of Tarentum, Steve could hear the Commandos as they sang their farewells to Bucky in the dockside tavern.  Four hours ago, he had been beside them.  Four hours ago, Steve had realized that, unlike his compatriots, he was not getting drunk.

Bucky was gone, and he couldn’t even herald him on his way to Valhalla properly.

Assuming that Bucky went to Valhalla.  They _had_ been in the middle of a fight, but Bucky had _fallen_ , he hadn’t been stabbed or shot or killed in any straightforward way. 

Steve stared out across the Ionian Sea morosely.  He was alone.  Not only was he alone, but he had gotten Bucky killed.  Killed.

Bucky was dead.

And possibly not even to Valhalla.

 _Bucky was dead_.

A soft noise drew Steve’s attention away from the easy back-and-forth of the waves.

Setting down her computer-scroll, Margareet Cartier sand down to sit beside him, her eyes dark with worry.

“Steve?” she asked, “Are you alright?”

Steve turned to glare at her.  “Alright?  Bucky’s _dead_.”

Margareet turned to stare into the water.  “Yes, he is.  But he wouldn’t want you to beat yourself about this.  Why are you out here by yourself?”

“I can’t mourn,” Steve said hoarsely.  “I can’t drink, I can’t laugh, I can’t _sing_ ; how am I supposed to mourn him properly if I can’t even go through the motions?”  He stood up, pushing his hands through his hair.  “Was this worth it?”

“How can you say that?”  Margareet snapped, jumping to her feet, her computer clenched in her fist.  “How can you stand there and ask if it was worth it?  You didn’t just save Bucky when you attacked HYDRA, Steve, you saved us all!  You saved Yecuvi, Timothy, Gavriel, Jacques, and Gumrikh from a fate worse than death!  You saved thousands of lives across Europe!  I would be on some mission in Byzantium or Sezares right now, if it weren’t for you!  How can you ask if it was worth it?”

“ _Because Bucky is dead!_ ” Steve roared, his heart pounding in his ears.  Margareet flinched away from him, and Steve instantly felt terrible.  Despite that, the poisonous words continued to pour from his mouth.

“How can it all be worth it if he’s dead?  How can I _live_ if he’s dead?  I’d just be some sickly ergi in Hjördíshavn working to death if Bucky hadn’t convinced me that I was worth something!   I –”  Steve stopped short, a dark and terrible thought twisting through his mind.

Margareet touched his arm gently.  “Steve,” she breathed.  “It will be alright.  The sun will still rise tomorrow.”

“Then why does it feel like it won’t?” Steve asked helplessly.  “Why does it feel like everything is ending?  I – By the branches of Yggdrasil, Margareet, I _loved him!_ ”

Margareet stared up at him.  “You – oh, Steve.”  She sat back down, pulling her knees to her chest.  Feeling wrung out and limp, Steve sank down to sit beside her. 

“I can’t say that I completely understand,” Margareet said slowly, “Because I believe in the Great Mother who gathers all to her bosom, not the halls of Valhalla.  My people, we burn our dead, and we cry until no tears will fall within the light of the flames.  I have never lost a lover –”  Margareet raised a hand when Steve opened his mouth.  “No, I know you never slept with him, but that does not mean that you were not lovers in every other way.  Your souls, your hearts, those were lovers, and that cannot be denied.  But…” she hesitated, blinking hard.  Steve waited in silence for a long moment.  Finally –

“I had a twin sister.  Her name was Eilanit, and she had no feet.”

Steve tried to imagine a person without feet, and failed.  Tentatively, he spoke up.  “What happened?”

Margareet didn’t look at him.  “Franx soldiers raped and killed her.  She held on long enough to buy me time so that I could kill them.  I split their heads with a cast-iron pan.”  She turned, her normally soft brown eyes hard.  “I stole their boat and fled to Alexandria, as if I hadn’t left only two years before.  In Alexandria, I was safe.”

Steve struggled to process the story.  Finally, he said slowly, “Why don’t you hate me?”

Margareet shook her head.  “Do you know why we call you Captain Alexandria?”

Surprised by the non sequitur, Steve shook his head.  Margareet sighed. 

“Alexandria is a symbol of hope to the world.  Physically, The Tower and the Lighthouse can be seen for a five to seven hundred mile radius.  Outside of the physical, Alexandria is the home of knowledge and freedom, one of the first cities in which a Norseman could argue philosophy with a Judean while a Venitz’yan took notes.  It is the only place in the world where you can find a person who speaks every known language in existence.  Even better, Alexandria is the place where billions of people, young and old, place their hopes and their dreams.  It is the home of cures and conversation, of dreams and deliberation.  It is everything that we want for the world after this war.  And you, Steve, you are the man who embodies that dream.  You are the man who dreamed of more, and worked with science to get there.  You are the leader who loves his men, and the person who is loved by many.  The name Captain Alexandria means “the future,” Steve.  It means hope.  And, unlike many other possible people who could have taken your place, you don’t just wear the propaganda of Captain Alexandria, you _are_ Captain Alexandria.  And I can’t hate you, because I, like so many, have found that I love you.”

Steve stared at her.  “ _I’m_ hope?  Without Bucky, I’m hope _less!_ ”

Margareet slapped him.  “You _aren’t without Bucky_.”  She tapped his chest.  “He’s still in here.”  She tapped his head.  “And he’s still in here.  He’s not gone unless you let him go, Captain.  But Bucky Bjorns was not just a sniper and a good fighter.  He had hope.  Are you going to let his hope go?”

Steve took a long breath.  “I – no.  But it _hurts_ , Margareet.”

“To some extent, it probably always will.  But the pain becomes bearable, and Bucky wouldn’t want you to stop fighting.”  Margareet raised an eyebrow.  “Would he?”

Steve suddenly could remember Bucky vividly, his fierce determination to defeat HYDRA not just the determination of Bucky Bjorns, but now the determination of Stevin Rothgers.

“No,” Steve rasped.  “He wouldn’t.”

He had a war to fight.

And for Bucky’s sake, he would _win_.


	4. Chapter Four

In late February of 1824, BINYAN, who had been trawling all their intelligence lines for the entire war, finally got their hands on the location of HYDRA’s center of operations.

 “Yohann Schmidt is based here, in Cundivicom,” Margareet told the Howling Commandoes, pointing at a spot on their strategic map inside what little was left of Franx, a ways northwest of Sezares. “All of HYDRA’s orders eventually start from here, and three nights ago, Yohann Schmidt was seen entering the city. As far as we can tell, the entire city of Cundivicom is nothing but a nest of HYDRA activity. We’re going to head north from our position, here-”

Now she was pointing at the portion of occupied Franx they were currently in, west of Sezares.

 “-and rendezvous with a Viking raiding party just outside Cundivicom to storm the city.”

The night of the first of March found Steve huddled in the night away from the Commandoes and the raiding party, staring at the city, off in the distance.

Prince Zohar settled quietly down in the grass next to him.

 “I heard about the death of Buchanan Bjorns,” he said. “He died well.”

 “I know,” Steve said. In his head, he could still picture Zohar’s sister Naomi the way he’d first seen her that evening, long auburn hair done up tightly as she stepped forward with her brother, who was personally leading the raiding party. He’d remembered, suddenly, joking with Bucky about meeting her in Jerusalem. “He would have loved to be a part of this.”

Zohar nodded in agreement.

 “We’ve always called ourselves Vikings, Captain, but it’s been centuries since any one of us went a-viking. When I sent for volunteers for this party, asking for only the very best, there were warriors who traveled even from the far frozen reaches north of Mississippi to answer the call. We are ready for war, and it will be an honor to fight with you in the morning.”

Steve looked over at him.

 “Thank you.”

The Vikings and the Commandoes moved on Cundivicom in the gray light before dawn, Prince Zohar leading by quite a ways. He was the first to reach the low city walls at the point where they were nearest the actual HYDRA base, and, in time with Naomi’s count, unleashed the same explosion of hard, gold-white destructive light that had given his great-grandmother, the forty-third King of the Vikings, the name ‘Antona the Golden’. The Vikings and the Commandoes charged as the light started to fade, and fought their way through the newly-made entrance to the city and down the couple streets separating the HYDRA base from the wall.

When they breached the base perimeter, they saw that a huge adjoining section of the city had been razed, and the wall there knocked down.

Princess Naomi looked deeply disapproving about this, and muttered about BINYAN’s operation deficiencies in gathering intelligence as she followed Steve into the base’s main building, killing and maiming all the way.

The building was astonishingly- and suspiciously- empty.

 “Either everyone is in the city,” Naomi told him quietly as they went through the corridors. “Or Schmidt has something big he’s guarding.”

They met up with Margareet, Dernier, and Morita unexpectedly a time later.

 “You need to come see this, Captain,” Margareet told him; and he and Naomi followed her and the others to the biggest room Steve had ever been in- or maybe it only _seemed_ like the biggest, because on the factory floors all the free space was clogged with giant machinery, and Boat Dock 7 had been dark and filled with boats. This space was empty, and open on end, facing the razed field and knocked-down section of city wall, but for a massive contraption looming in the center, guarded by a few HYDRA soldiers.

 “A _plane!_ ” Margareet hissed. “I’ve never one so big! We didn’t even know HYDRA _was_ flight capable!”

 “What are they doing with a plane?” Morita wondered.

Dernier touched the objects suspended in the racks they were hiding behind.

 “I know what these are,” he told them all quietly. “Bombs. Big ones. Biggest ones I’ve ever seen. I have no _idea_ how much damage they’d do.”

Steve, used to the small charges Dernier managed for the Howling Commandoes breaking-and-entering missions, shuddered. _These_ explosives were as big as Nao-

_Where was Naomi._

There was a strangled yell from one of the guards by the plane, and everyone looked just in time to see Naomi straighten up from the dispatched guards and replace a hair stick. The guard who’d yelled was twitching on the ground, desperately clutching at his neck.

 “They’ve put the bombs on the plane,” she called over. “Come over and look, they’re attached under the wings somehow.”

Everyone approached her cautiously and huddled together under the nearest wing, staring up at the bombs suspended above their heads.

 “But _why?_ ” Morita asked, voice small and lost. “Why would you ever make bombs this big; why would you ever put them on a plane-”

 “So you can drop them,” Naomi said, sounding completely unconcerned about that.

 “On _what?_ ” Margareet asked, aghast.

Naomi shrugged.

 “Anything you wanted. Think about it. This plane, taking off from- oh, Narbon, flying over the Mediterranean and putting Alexandria in its sights-”

In his head, Steve saw the cascades of shattered glass and the tumbling of towers that broke the cloud cover-

_“No,”_ Dernier whispered, horrified. “ _No,_ I would not wish that on even the bandit nests of Mississippi-”

 “Someone help me up,” Steve said grimly. “I’m going to detach those bombs.”

Naomi offered him her cupped hands and Steve stared at her.

 “Take it running,” she advised.

He did, and she must have had some sort of mutation, because he was vaulted, perfectly, into position to grab the main steel bar holding the bombs and swing himself onto the catwalk lining the bomb cavity.

As soon as his boots hit the grate, the plane’s engine roared on, and it started to move- quickly.

_“Steve!”_ Margareet yelled. _“Jump!”_

_“I **can’t!** ” _he yelled back. _“Think about what Naomi said- contact BINYAN! I’m going to take out whoever’s driving this thing and put it down!”_

He rushed for the access door at the end of the catwalk, and shut himself inside the body of the plane just as it took off.

-

Steve crept through the unfamiliar passages of the plane, trying not think about the fact that he was high in the air with nothing supporting him from the ground. It made him queasy and uneasy, and he needed to focus.

Finally, he came to a set of heavy doors that opened with just a touch to a pressure pad on the wall next to them. Inside was an empty chair, windows looking out to the sky, a complicated control panel that reminded him of the one on the big boat to Alexandria, and-

There was a cube, the same glowing smoky blue as the HYDRA weapons, little white lights sparking deeper within it. He’d thought it was glass, some kind of new battery, maybe, but as he approached, he realized the cube was _made_ of the stuff. He could see tiny vapors of blue-black wisp off it- he didn’t want to get his hand anywhere _near_ it, he’d seen what HYDRA weapons could do to a man, but he couldn’t just leave it sitting there.

Cautiously, he touched the center of the shield to the somehow-solid energy. It started to buzz, the vibranium reacting in a way it never had to the weapon beams- the buzz was low and a bit slow, at first, but it built fast and got higher and higher and the shield _shrieked_ like it was alive and Steve was certain his arm would be shaken apart-

A bullet hit the shield and Steve jerked away from the cube. The arm supporting his shield fell limply to his side, numb, and Steve ducked behind one of the thick, exposed upright beams supporting the structure of the plane.

 “That was the _Tesseract,_ Captain Alexandria!” he heard Yohann Schmidt call, and mentally cursed himself. Of _course_ the person manning the plane would be Schmidt, something this terrible would _have_ to be HYDRA’s end plan.

Futilely, he tried to make his numb arm respond. It refused to move.

 “A marvel, isn’t it?” Schmidt continued. Steve couldn’t tell where his voice was coming from, but a second bullet _ping_ ed against the floor grating right next to him and he scrambled away, taking the shield on his good arm. He wouldn’t be able to shoot back at Schmidt, wherever he was, but the protection the shield offered was more important.

 “I found it in Norway, buried in the side of a mountain in one of the fjords. Imagine my surprise and _joy_ , Captain- one of Odin’s own treasures, a war-prize captured and kept in his vaults! Or so the legends told us.”

A third bullet, and Steve had spotted him now, lurking in the shadows on the edges of the room, working his way towards the Tesseract.

 “The Finns claim superior knowledge of the Aesir, did you know that? _Their_ legends say that Odin cast the Tesseract down to Earth to keep it from Asgard, because it holds a creeping poison that corrodes whatever it influences. But the Tesseract is _power,_ pure and simple! There was no fjord that could match the one hiding the Tesseract in the power of their storms, and no weapon, charged with its energy, that can ever be truly defeated! Even your shield, Captain, just now, rejected it in its purest form!”

Steve caught the fourth bullet on his shield and it whizzed off into the darkness on the opposite side of the room from Schmidt. His aim must have been off, somehow- usually, given warning, Steve could direct bullets better. He’d practiced with Margareet and Gumrikh often enough.

 “It’s fitting, then, that HYDRA’s first _public_ demonstration be against the Finns,” Schmidt told him. “Them and their _untruths;_ their perverse worship of the Liesmith-”

 “Did you hear that?” Steve said softly behind his shield. The commlinks had never been tested at this range, but-

 “No,” Margareet said. “Steve, what’s _happening-_ ”

 “Schmidt’s the one driving the plane,” Steve told her, relieved beyond words that one of his Commandoes had picked up. “Well, I think it’s driving itself, actually, is it supposed to do that? But he told me what the mystery energy from the HYDRA weapons is- Margareet, he’s got the _Tesseract_.”

 “The what?”

 “Ask- ask Dugan, or Prince Zohar- no, is Naomi still there? She should know, it’s- it’s an _Aesir_ thing, Margareet; and he says the plane is moving on the Finns-”

He could hear murmuring on the other side of the comm, indistinct.

 “Do you have _backup_ coming, Captain?” Schmidt mocked. “A _Viking,_ with a support group- I shouldn’t have expected anything else from a Vinlander-”             

Steve never saw the fourth bullet because the shield was still in the way but he _heard_ it, the _ping_ as it hit dead-on; and smoky blue light like heat lightning played over the vibranium for moment before the bullet reversed direction completely and sank straight into the Tesseract.

He peeked around the edge of the shield and lowered in, in awe, as the Tesseract started to spurt energy. The air came undone and there were stars, softly glowing, and jumbled filaments of color like the thin drifting clouds he’d seen sometimes over Alexandria.

The unraveling on the edges of space went further, and slipped under Schmidt’s feet. He stared straight at Steve, saying something- but there was no sound from his mouth, and Steve barely noticed.

 “Taivaskaavelija,” Margareet said in his ear as the cosmos opened up before him. “It’s the original capital of the Finns, the place where Loki first set foot on Earth and met and married Sikkin Pirkkje, the first-”

 “The first Princess of the Finns,” Steve said. The Tesseract contracted in on itself, and, softly, the stars were gone. “The start of their empire. Yeah. Yeah it was.”

-

Steve threw the Tesseract a wary look, and then scrambled to the front of the plane. 

“Talk to me, Steve,” Margareet said sharply.  “What’s happening?”

Steve looked over the buttons and screens.  “Schmidt’s gone,” he said shakily.  “The Tesseract – ate him.  Or something.  Look, the plane is flying itself, how do I stop it?”

“Is there a steering device?”  Margareet sounded worried.

Steve looked around.  Sure enough, amidst the buttons and screens sat a steering device not unlike one used on a ship.  “Yes,” he said.  Grabbing it with both hands, he attempted to turn the plane.

The steering equipment didn’t budge. 

“It’s not moving,” Steve said, alarmed.  “I’m afraid to put more pressure on it, what if I break it?”

Margareet took a shaky-sounding breath.  “Just hold on, Steve, just – hold on.”

Steve looked around, taking in all of the buttons and screens.  Out of the corner of his eye, he could see land underneath the plane.  His heart leapt with fear before he realized that this wasn’t Finland – he could see Stonehenge.

“I’m over Britain,” Steve said, running his hands nervously over the buttons and screens.  “Please tell me there’s a way to stop this plane!”

A new voice crackled over the commlinks.  “Captain, this is Virginia Potts, Doctor of Physics and Administration.  Is the plane being driven by a computer system?”

Steve blinked.  “There’s no person flying it, if that’s what you mean.”

“Precisely,” said Virginia Potts.  “Captain, there should be something which is recognizable as a computer screen.  Do you see one?”

Steve looked around.  “I see three.”

“Read them off to me.”

Steve took a shaky breath as the Orcades passed beneath the plane.  “There’s a large one that has a lot of numbers on it, a small one with a map, and a middling-sized one with colored boxes on it.”

“Do the colored boxes have words on them?”

Steve felt his heart drop.  “Yes,” he said, “But they’re in Antonian Alexandrian.  I can’t read that well enough to read them.”

“You don’t need to,” said Virginia Potts, sounding a bit relieved.  “Do you know all of the letters?”

Steve was suddenly thankful for that dreadful month in observation.  “Yes.”

“Spell them out, then.”

Steve licked his lips, a bit humiliated.  How many people now knew that he couldn’t read Alexandrian?  He pushed the thought away.  “Red box in the top left corner,” he said, “Epsilon Tzin Mu Alpha Alpha Sin Eta.  Blue box in the top right corner: seventy-six divided by one hundred, Tau Iod Nu Phi Alpha Tau Alpha.  Grey box bottom center, Mu Alpha Alpha Sin Eta Heta Iod Tau Alpha Lambda Alpha Mu.”

“Double tap the grey box in the bottom center,” Virginia said, sounding pleased.  “A box should appear with a keyboard and the top should read Lambda Iod Phi Tau Omicron Alpha Kheta.”

Steve did as instructed.  “Now what?”  The keyboard was also in Alexandrian.

“Type in the following sequence,” Virginia said.  “Alpha Nu Omicron Kheta Iod Iod Shin Beta Alpha Rho Zeta Epsilon Lambda.”

Steve did as instructed, and then verified, “Alpha Nu Omicron Kheta Iod Iod Shin Beta Alpha Rho Zeta Epsilon Lambda?”

“Correct,” Virginia said.  “Now, as soon as you hit the Accept button, you’ll only have five minutes of control over the system before one of two things will happen.  Either the entire system will crash, or the backup system will kick in.”

Steve swallowed hard.  “So what you’re saying is, I don’t have time to learn how to land this thing.”

“What!”  Margareet suddenly shouted over the system.  “That can’t be – someone call Stark.  Or better, Potts, get _your_ Stark.  You can’t _do_ this.”

“I don’t have a choice!” Virginia Potts’ voice broke.  “It’s a closed system, manufactured somewhere that _isn’t_ in Tony’s workshop.  The hack will work, but nothing more than a full scale hack could be better, and that would take hours.  We _just don’t have time_.”

“So,” Steve said, “I’m gonna have to put her down in the water.  If I don’t do it manually, it’ll correct and head out over land.”  He took a deep breath.  “How do I do that, Doctor Virginia Potts?”

Margareet was shouting in the background, but Virginia Potts’ voice was clear, if a bit shaken.  “Hit the button that reads Heta Omicron Sin Eta Kheta, and push the driving mechanism as far into the wall of the plane as the mechanism allows.”

Steve shut his eyes, and pressed the button.  Quickly, he replaced his hands on the steering device, and pushed forward as hard as he could.

The plane abruptly shifted downwards, and spun wildly before correcting and diving towards the sea.  Steve took a shaky breath as the air screamed past the plane.  “Margareet?”

There was a clatter over the commlink.  “I’m here,” Margareet said shakily. 

“Do you think I’ll get into Valhalla?”  Steve shut his eyes.

Margareet sobbed.  “I’m sure you will, Steve.  You’re a hero.”

Steve might have said something more, but the stuttering screech of the commlink dying drowned it out.

Holding the useless piece of metal, Margareet repeated her words, praying that Steve could hear her. 

“You’re a hero, Steve.”


	5. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is it, folks. The end of Captain Alexandria. What about the 6th chapter, you say?   
> MAPS!!!!!  
> So you know where everything is in this crazy alternate universe of ours.  
> See you in Iron Man!

**Five Years Later**

The air was a comfortable ten degrees centigrade, but on the Zeta-2247-Delta-Tzin-3 Iceberg, it was snowing.

Standing impassively with his hands inches from his guns, one might have thought that Nicholas Ibn Yakov Fury was standing on the streets of his native city, Carthage, or perhaps his home of thirty years, Alexandria.  In actuality, the man was casting a long shadow across a ship emblazoned with the letters Shin, Alpha, Heta, Alpha, and Delta.

“Director Fury?”

Fury turned towards the speaker, Agent Miria of Narbonne.  Miria had been a vicious resistance fighter during the war, but hesitant as an agent in the years that had passed.  “What?”

Miria’s lips twitched with something that would have been a smile on a happier woman’s face.  “They found him, sir.”

Fury nodded, and followed as Miria retraced her footsteps.  They stopped beside a burly Norseman working on a block of ice.  Through the blur of frozen and re-frozen water, something unnaturally dark and human-shaped was visible.

“Stop working,” Fury ordered.  He turned to Miria.  “Get me a BioScanner.”

“Yes, sir.”  Miria sprinted away.

Fury surveyed the block of ice as the crew of Norsemen moved out of the way.  Frankly, the thing could be any poor idiot who had ended up overboard in the Atlantic.  Gods knew that it wasn’t uncommon.

But, although Fury wasn’t a betting man, he would bet his one good eye that this man was no ordinary frozen sailor.

“Sir?  I have the BioScanner.”

Fury snatched the hand-held scanner as Miria set up the receiving computer for the data.  Slowly, starting where he assumed the frozen man’s feet to be, Fury scanned the block of ice.

“It’s definitely human, sir,” Miria called.  “We have a positive on the XY chromosome, DNA is running the system now, face is in face-trace.”

“Avinu bashamayim, Hakadosh barukh hu, mi kho El!”

“Agent Miria?”  Fury called. 

“Sorry, sir, but Doctor Yosef Bét Lakhmi just freaked out.  He –”

“Director Fury, Captain Alexandria is alive!  He is still alive!”  Doctor Yosef Bét Lakhmi sounded positively hysterical.

Fury swore.  “Is that true?  Agent Miria, verify.”

After a moment with no response, Fury whirled around to face the computer.  Agent Miria was staring at the screen, her mouth open just the slightest bit.

“Miria!”

Agent Miria jumped.  “Yes, sir?  I – it’s just – Doctor Yosef Bét Lakhmi is right.  The scan is picking up an extremely slow but steady heartbeat, body functions as normal, albeit a very slow normal, and –”

Fury pulled out his pocket space heater and began running it on high, a few inches above the ice.  Within moments, the ice was melting easily from around the most recognizable face on the planet. 

As a group of agents swarmed, melting the ice from around the rest of Captain Alexandria’s body, Fury stared at the now-freed face, and remembered.

_“I’m gonna have to put her down in the water,” Steve said, his voice terribly clear over the comm link.  “If I don’t do it manually, it’ll correct and head out over land.”_

Fury blinked, and the memory was gone.  In its place was a crowd of agents, one of them shouting “By Loki’s silver tongue, he’s _breathing_!”

Fury shook his head.  “Always against the odds, Captain,” he murmured, pulling out his phone.  “Agent?”

_“Sir?”_

“I’m gonna need you to come in.”

_“Now?”_

“I’ll send a replacement to you.”

_“You’re not the one who’ll have to negotiate with Dorothea.”_

“I’ll send an anthropologist.  I need you to come in.”

_“You’d be better off sending a student of law.  Where?”_

Fury stared into the sky as the agents placed the prone body of Captain Alexandria in a safety capsule.  “HQ,” he said briskly.  “You’re in for a surprise.”

The person on the other end huffed a laugh.  _“Did Virginia Potts admit to being the Iron Man?”_

Fury began walking towards his personal airship as the agents loaded the safety capsule.  “Better.  Captain Alexandria is alive.”


	6. Maps

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please go to Kila9Nishika on DeviantArt.Com for the ability to zoom in on the pictures.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/125689592@N04/14454341586)[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/125689592@N04/14290830160) [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/125689592@N04/14454342076)

**Author's Note:**

> CHARACTER LIST - SPOILERS FOR THE STORY - CHARACTER LIST:  
> Stevin Rothgers- Steven Rogers  
> Buchanan Bjorns- James Buchanan Barnes  
> Howard Antonius Stark- Howard Stark  
> Dr. Avraham Bét Yisorel- Dr. Abraham Erskine  
> Dr. Alspeth Ros- Betty Ross  
> Dr. Phillipos, Director of BINYAN- Colonel Phillips  
> Margareet Cartier- Margaret Carter  
> Logan- Logan (Wolverine)  
> Yohann Schmidt- Johann Schmidt (Red Skull)  
> Gavriel Bét Yakov- Gabriel Jones  
> Yecuvi Morita- Jim Morita  
> Gumrikh Fallwirt- Montgomery Falsworth  
> Timothy Dugan- Timothy Aloysis Cadawallader “Dum-Dum” Dugan  
> Jacques Dernier- Jacques Dernier  
> Naomi Eydísdottir- Natasha Romanov  
> Nicholas Ibn Yakov Fury- Nick Fury  
> Miiria- Maria Hill  
> Virginia Potts – Pepper Potts
> 
>  
> 
> LIST OF PLACES IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE:  
> Hjördíshavn- mainland New York City  
> Vinland- Northeastern North America  
> Roma (city)- Rome  
> Byzantium (city)- Istanbul  
> Alba- Scotland  
> Ibernís- Inverness  
> Mississippi- North America west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains  
> Kesurga- Prague  
> Hekassir Empire- Northern half of the Netherlands, Germany, western half of Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland east of Kaliningrad, eastern half of Slovakia, eastern half of Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia  
> Belgunda- Eastern half Belgium and southern half of the Netherlands  
> Franx- France not including the Mediterranean coast or the Pyrenees, and eastern half Switzerland  
> Narbonne- the French Mediterranean coast and the southeastern half of the Pyrenees  
> Hispania- northwestern section of the Iberian Peninsula to the Guadalquivir River, including all of Portugal, and northwestern half of the Pyrenees  
> Iberia- the of the Iberian Peninsula  
> Sarmatia- Poland west of Kaliningrad, western half of Slovakia, western half of Hungary, northern half of Romania, Belarus, Ukraine, and into Russia under treaty terms with the Finns until the Volga River  
> Byzantium (country)- Greece, eastern half of Turkey, the Balkans  
> Judea (as a name for Aegupt-Yehudi/Aegupt-Judea)- Yehudi/Judea: Lebanon, Israel and the Sinai Peninsula Aegupt- Egypt, Sudan, and eastern half of Libya  
> Alexandria- the Egyptian city of Alexandria  
> Pharos Ktana (island in Alexandria)- no longer in existence  
> Narbon- the French city of Narbonne  
> Tolosse- the French city of Toulouse  
> Tarrago- the Spanish city of Tarragona  
> Tolida- the Spanish city of Toledo  
> Birgandum- the Spanish city of A Coruña  
> Florentia- the Italian city of Florence  
> Medyolana- the Italian city of Milan  
> Burgunda- Western half of Belgium and Luxembourg  
> Sezares- the French city of Tour  
> Woodhenge- no longer in existence  
> Lughevashem- London  
> Finland (as a name for Suomi Valtakunta)- Finland and the northern half of Russia minus the portion facing Alaska  
> Treve- the German city of Hamburg  
> Venitz’ya- the historical Republic of Venice (only on the mainland of Italy)  
> Japanese Empire (also Japan and Nihon)- Papua New Guinea, the majority of Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, most of the Pacific coast of Russia and northern China, the southeastern and southern coast of Alaska, and the entire western coast of North America into the Rocky Mountains  
> Turkey- Modern Turkey south and west of the Kizilirmak River, Syria, Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan up around the Black Sea to meet Sarmatian territory at the modern town of Kerch  
> Aquinicum- the Hungarian city of Budapest  
> Tarentum- Taranto, Italy  
> Cundivicom- the French city of Nantes  
> Taivaskaavelija- the Finnish city of Helsinki  
> Stonehenge- Stonehenge  
> The Orcades- The Orkney Islands  
> Carthage- the historical city of Carthage; or the modern day Tunisian city of Tunis


End file.
